In a new report from E! News on Wednesday, in an interview following the ATX TV Festival in Texas, Julie said that turning Elena ( Nina Dobrev ) into a vampire is like “we’re starting over – we’re starting a new story.”

While the show will still have the “same world, same characters, same feelings, same everything,” for the heroine Elena it will be a brand new start, Julie revealed.

“It is a beginning for her and what was exciting about it is we were going to do it,” Julie said, “and so everything we did all year long was leading up to this.”

Julie added that when they started working on season 4 , “it makes everything feel so new and so fresh and so, in that way, it takes us back to that great feeling of the beginning of that first season where it’s about a girl with a secret and it’s a becoming , it’s a transition.”

This beginning will also see Elena’s feelings possibly change towards the Salvatore brothers, as she may have different feelings about her choice. When she picked Stefan ( Paul Wesley ) as the man she wanted to be with, that was her choice as a human.

But, “she’s not human anymore,” Julie added.

“So, how will she change and what will her that do to her relationship with everybody in her life?” Julie teased, “And so it just opens the door wider rather than closing it.”